Saxon Andrew: Searcher

“No, I made it from outside the system. I took the time to watch what was taking place on the planet and I must say I look forward to dealing with these Gresh. They are treating the population brutally.” Angel took a minute to say hello to her former classmates and then settled back to see what Matt had planned.

While Matt introduced the other searchers to Goige, Angel thought back to her first meeting with Matt. She was sitting in the academy’s library during her second year the night before she was to take a math exam. She had struggled for hours with the problems and found that she was lost. The concepts were too much for her and she knew she was going to have her first bad grade. She was sitting there feeling her tears fall on the papers in front of her. It was one of her goals to be at the top of her class and this would end that dream.

“Excuse me, is something wrong?”

She looked up and saw Matt looking at her with a concerned look. She was used to the human students in the academy approach her because of her beauty. She had become quite adept at fending off most suitors, but this young man really looked concerned. His green eyes seemed to go through her. She lowered her head and said, “I just can’t understand the concepts of these problems. I know I am going to fail my exam tomorrow. Thanks for asking but I need get back to work.” She turned her attention back to her problems.

Matt looked at the problems on the paper in front of her and said, “Would you mind if I helped you?”

Angel looked back up at him and said, “I’m beyond help but thanks again.”

Matt looked her directly in the eyes and said, “You can do this; you just have to change your perspective.”

Angle furrowed her brow, “What do you mean?”

“These problems are in the wrong order. The concepts are hidden in them but they must be done in a particular order because they build on each other.”

She looked up at him and saw he was not just coming on to her; he really wanted to help. “Show me what you mean.”

“You don’t have enough time to just observe me do the problems. I want you to enter my mind and watch me do the problems mentally. I know that you might be nervous about that but I am inviting you to see what I see.”

Angel knew that opening one’s mind was a serious thing and that everything about the person would be available for viewing. She looked at him and he said, “I trust that you will only look at the part of my mind doing the math.”

She nodded and she entered his mind and saw the fourth problem. “I want you to follow me as I look at all the permutations of this question. I am going to just follow them until I find a pattern.” She watched as he rapidly went thru each of the avenues that the problem gave him and then she saw it. There was a pattern to how the permutations flowed. Once she saw it she knew the answer. “The answer doubles and adds the first number to each value.”

“Exactly,” Matt said. “Now that you’ve seen that pattern, question eight uses that pattern and give you another one that you have to see to arrive at the correct answer.”

She followed him through eight questions and discovered each new pattern as she watched him go through the variables. Then she said, “I can already see the answer to the remaining two questions. I can also look at the second page of problems and see what order they should be solved.”

She left his mind and looked at him. “I can see math like I never have. You have opened my mind in a rather remarkable way. It’s almost like magic.”

He flinched when she said that and she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“My childhood friends called me Magic.”

“I didn’t look in your mind to see that. However, it is a perfect name for you. Thank you for helping me. I really appreciate it.”

He smiled at her and turned and left. She sat there for an hour and remembered the feeling of being in his mind. He was amazing and though she didn’t look around in his mind, she could sense the power of his intellect. He intimidated and fascinated her in equal measure. He was also quite nice physically. She asked around the next day and found out that he, like her, was going to command an Alpha Ship. That didn’t surprise her after she had seen his mind. She kept her eye on him from that moment on and she always called him Magic for the gift he had given her that night. No one else held any interest for her from that night on but he never approached her or asked her out. She knew this was the man she wanted in her life.

She came back to the planning session when she heard Matt ask her, “How are their troops organized?”

“They have set up housing facilities in the center of each of their cities. Most of the troops operate out of those structures.”

Matt pressed a button on his com and a new face entered their conversation. “General Durk, I am going to include you in our planning session. I hope that after we have saved the prisoners that we can use your warriors to negate the forces the Gresh have landed on the planet.”

“I have viewed the scan of the planet and I think that we have enough warriors to neutralize ninety five percent of their armed forces. I am making assignments as we speak and setting up the objectives for each of our participants. The ones that we will miss are those Gresh scattered out in the population. I’m hoping that you will be able to scan the cities and find them and prevent them from causing a massacre.”

Matt pushed his com, “Each Searcher will be assigned a city. The selected targets of our warriors will be downloaded into your ships and you will scan the rest of the city for any one that has the frequency of Gresh weapons. If they attempt to kill anyone, you will have to do what is necessary to defend the population. Once we have things under control, I’ll call in a Defender ship and they will relieve us. At that point you may return to your previous assignments.’

“What about the Gresh Fleet in the system,” Emerald asked?

We will be scattered around the planet’s surface. If any of their ships come inside the orbit of their moon, we will fire on them. I will warn their fleet to stay away from the planet once we start our operation but I don’t expect them to listen. It’s important that you use your scanners and allow your ships to keep you informed as to what’s happening in your area of responsibility; any questions?”

Goige asked, “Do your ships have the ability to do all that you just talked about?”

“I’m going to honest; there may be some loss of life, however, I think that the numbers will be far less than if we don’t take action. Do we have your approval to implement our plan? We will not force ourselves on another civilization unless innocent people are going to be killed. If you say no, then we won’t carry out our plan and leave. It’s your decision.”

“Goige, I believe we have to allow these ships to help us. I’ve seen that the first ship could have destroyed all of us when we attacked him and he chose not to harm us. I believe these are people we can trust.”

““My Fleet Admiral seems to feel like as I do.” Goige paused and said, “Implement your plan.”

The ten Searchers felt their excitement rise; this is what they had trained for at the academy and now they were going to be able to use their ships to save lives. They were totally in the moment and the ten hours until they began seemed to last forever.

The King of the Stars Realm looked over at his Queen and said, “I’ve just been told that one of our new Searchers has discovered new civilizations that are in the middle of a galactic war.”

“I’ve also seen the reports. The Searcher commands an Alpha ship and I met him four years ago when he was a new recruit. I hear he has saved millions of lives in one system and is organizing an effort to save more lives in another system.”